The Emancipation of Corporate America
How Speaking the Truth Can Free us All
I’m all cried out. I did what was I supposed to do. I grew up in a two parent household where both parents were educators. My Mom earned promotions to retire as a principal and my Stepdad retired as a high school teacher. Higher education touched three generations of my family. I graduated from Howard University with a Bachelor’s degree in political science, built a corporate career in human resources, and later returned to graduate school to earn both a Master of Business degree and a Doctorate in Education from Seattle University. I was the last Black homeowner to purchase on my block in a historically red lined neighborhood in the midst of gentrification. I possess emotional intelligence, offer patronage to the arts, and chair boards for worthy causes. I fly first class and have retired passports filled with global entry and departure stamps. I adore a fine cigar with a smooth cognac while listening to Debussy, and, I love throwing on a ball cap and choking back a long neck while jamming to Luke Combs with a few of my closest bubbas. Yet, in corporate spaces my presence is tolerated as an exception, while in public spaces, my presence is interpreted as a threat.
Personal disclosure is one of the best practices for creating connection. Determining how one enters this national conversation concerning race requires each of us to dig deep to examine our own motivations. Like many Black and African American professionals, I have mastered the principles of double consciousness and the art of code switching. However, now is the time to be unambiguously clear. At personal and professional risk, I am using my credentials and experience to mount my form of protest and rebellion. As the youth take to the streets, I am choosing to break the corporate norm of mixing politics and business, because frankly, every Black and African American’s life depends on it. I am choosing to raise the temperatures in our corporate suites and boardrooms to have a candid conversation with clients, colleagues, and peers that you have always said you would welcome with your open-door policies. To be honest, recently I have questioned whether you meant this statement, given the palpable silence found on LinkedIn and other professional digital forums. However, I am going to presume positive intent and goodwill to speak truth to power.
The practice of reframing can be a powerful technique for helping organizational leaders, followers, and stakeholders see past their present realities to consider what they experience in a different light. Crucial conversations with water-cooler honesty are needed to move us from our safe spaces and into brave spaces. As America grapples with the birth defect of her original sin, we must consider that we do not stand on the familiar ground. Our existing tools and techniques are insufficient to shield us in this moment. We will find no quarter nor comfort in the bannering nor sloganeering, the reviewing of organizational data, nor in the committing to diversity recruiting and hiring, while pledging to listen, hear, and learn about the world that has surrounded us for the past 243 years. So, my friends — and I extend to you my courtesy and trust as unseen friends — as my dear friend, mentor, and Sista’ says, “it’s time to put the tuna on the table.”
As an experienced people and organizational strategist, I have built a career and livelihood out of being an exception. So, please believe me when I tell you — you do not have a problem with diversity and inclusion. No, you do not. Instead:
You have a “power and position” preservation problem;
You have an “old boy network” and “sorority row” problem;
You have a “don’t shine your light too brightly, lest you’ll show the rest of us up” problem;
You have a “consider feedback as a gift, only to experience it being wielded as a weapon” problem;
You have a “one of these things does not quite fit like the other” problem;
You have a “be twice as good, confident self-expression of excellence being questioned as ‘why is he so uppity’ and ‘who does she think she is’, resulting in cookie-cutter mediocrity” problem;
You have a “Black and African American quest for the American dream being thwarted by White resentment, fear of displacement, and the unfathomable fear of living and competing in a world without the advantage of privilege” problem.
Your — Pride marching, Grace Hopper sponsoring, chosen Identity affirming, and Blue Angel galas for Disabled Veterans celebrating — demonstrates, that you most certainly do not have a problem with your diversity and inclusion efforts. You do however, have a very real and deeply rooted organizational, cultural, social, political, judicial, technological, economic, ethical, spiritual, institutional and systemic racism, problem — and no amount of National Black MBA sponsoring, Black History month observing, nor soul food catered at HBCU recruiting events eating, can deny this fact any longer. Whew.
To be clear, in no way am I discounting the work, the expertise, nor the commitment of the army of diversity and inclusion practitioners who have slogged in the trenches to foster understanding and compel action. Indeed, organizations may grant a deserved promotion or confer an earned raise to a Black professional. But what difference will it make if that same professional is racially profiled for driving their Quattroporte while being Black. The Black Tax of working in corporate as an exception is not worth the cost of losing another Black life — period. This moment calls for all of us to do something different and uncomfortable. It is time for organizations to speak the truth and confront systemic racism.
Consider the analogy of a force field, wherein one direction all of the aspirations of diversity, equity, and inclusion drive for change. Now imagine in the opposite direction, that an invisible, taboo-laden unspeakable energy repels all forward momentum. In this example, systemic racism is the opposing force and the repelling energy is the power of Whiteness. Defining Whiteness — the institutional, systemic, normative, and cultural standard and criteria that ascribes disproportional value and personal advantages to those with white skin — exposes the challenges we face in discussing racism. For organizations that pledge to end racism and to become anti-racist, this means rejecting powerful mindsets of personal identity that: (1) stereotype multiracial communities while devaluing differences; (2) erect and maintain barriers of exclusion; and (3) derive sustained benefit from the inequity. For White professionals, this means decoupling their personal identity from systemic racism. Doing so requires the deep humility to admit not knowing what it means to live in a world beyond racial advantage. The path to freedom starts with understanding the nature of one’s own bondage. Just as White colleagues enter the uncomfortable space of transcending racial privilege, Black and African American colleagues will enter the new and unsettling space of ally-ship.
In 1867 when W.E.B. Dubois first published the term double consciousness in the Souls of Black Folk, he provided language to explain the Black experience of having to appear differently in different settings. The double consciousness of being Black in corporate America is perhaps best depicted through the numbers. Public spaces notwithstanding, in corporate spaces life is depicted as an exception when considering the representation numbers of 0.8% of Black CEOs leading Fortune 500 companies, of 3.8% of Blacks in senior executive and managerial roles, and of 8.0% of Blacks in professional roles overall. Imagine if these representation numbers were viewed as organizational KPIs by a new CEO tasked with a turnaround. What would happen if after decades of brand promise, capital investment, and labor expenses, when during a business review it was revealed that the organization had gained only 0.8% market penetration, records 3.8% annual return on investment, and generates an overall net promoter score of +8.0? Unit shut down, product and category exit, and asset redeployment to fund new initiatives and expand performing segments would be a no-brainer. Applying the principles of a corporate turnaround to the public domain sounds a lot like reimagining communities by reallocating existing budgets toward education, neighborhood development, and public safety. Perhaps corporate America should consider its own internal conflict of double consciousness.
Angela Davis once said, “I’ve learned to no longer accept the things that I cannot change; I now change the things that I can no longer accept.” Truthfully, very few organizations can have a competent conversation about race due to the imprecision of value-based language, the acceptance of opinion over the work of critical thinking, and the simple extension of grace for the frailty of being human. Nevertheless, we must envision a world beyond race and enter the “unknown unknown” with no guarantees. Acknowledging privilege is insufficient. This statement is not anti-person, rather, it is anti-racist. Transcending privilege requires the reframing of questions, the expansion of language, and the construction of new systems, tools, and mental models. This is how corporate America can begin to free itself.
The emancipation of corporate America is within our reach, and yet, the path we’ll travel will be unlike anything we have ever experienced. We’ll need to develop fresh muscles, create new signals and symbols to highlight the way, and ultimately tell new stories of how each of us got over. We know how our story began — with the clarity of 2020, let’s consider a new chapter for the 21st century:
After 243 years, a new generation of leaders, executives, professionals, colleagues, private shareholders, and public stakeholders in the United States of America find themselves in a crisis. Having inherited an imperfect nation from their Founding Fathers, divergent views among the citizens have paralyzed the national discourse. Bound by the social contract agreed to by the Founders, the citizens remain committed to: (1) establish justice; (2) ensure domestic tranquility; (3) provide for the common defense; (4) promote the general welfare; and (5) secure the blessings of liberty to [themselves] and posterity. Based on the ethics and values of the Founding Fathers in their time, and having been built upon the backs of enslaved Africans, the United States has emerged as the wealthiest and most powerful nation in human history while bearing the inherent flaw of racism deep within its foundational core. Since the nation’s inception, the killing of Black and African Americans had become so common place that only a smirk and a knee on the neck of a Black man for nearly nine minutes seems to have pierced the consciousness of the nation. Twenty years into the 21st century, the foundational defect of racism inherited from their Founding Fathers, threatens to tear the nation asunder.
Consider the following questions:
· What is happening in the United States of America in this moment?
· What artifacts, espoused beliefs, and basic assumptions about the United States support your observations?
· What beliefs and assumptions must corporate organizations be willing to challenge within their respective cultures to remain relevant in this moment?
· What role, work, and responsibility does corporate America have in this national conversation?
The is the single greatest adaptive challenge of our lifetime.
It is time for every organization to get to work.
